~ Reliving Childhood One Week at a Time

Monthly Archives: May 2012

This film is on my list of least favorite Disney animated films. There are some great points, and some not so great. Alas, the trouble with watching the entire Disney animated canon is that you have to watch all of them – whether you like it or not.

As you would probably guess, The Jungle Book, like most of the Disney stories, was based on a book. In fact, it was a collection of stories, of the same name, written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894 and 1895. He also wrote Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but I digress. Kipling was born in India, where the story is based. I can’t tell you how many people have told me it’s in Africa. Sorry, it’s not. Anyway, like all of the other stories adapted to Disney films, there are many many changes. But as this is a Disney blog, not a literary blog, I will just inform you that you may download the book for free, in its entirety from amazon. Walt, himself, told his animators not to bother reading the novel. He described what he wanted to see for himself.

The story was chosen at the suggestion of Bill Peet (see previous two films). Unfortunately for Bill, Walt hated his screenplay, causing Bill to quit. Bill Peet had worked with the company for twenty five years.

Despite my dislike of the film, there is much to be said about its place in Disney history, from its significance, to the artwork, to the characters, and to the music.

In the film, you will hear three particularly famous voices.

Playing the part of Kaa (my favorite character), the python, is none other than our old friend Sterling Holloway (the stork in Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh, etc.)

Playing the part of Baloo, the bear, is Phil Harris. “Who?” you ask? He was a bandleader and a radio man. He will also be the voice of Thomas O’Malley in the Aristocats and Little John in Robin Hood (more on Little John in a couple weeks.) He would also give the voice to Baloo in Tale Spin before he was replaced.

And last, but not least, we have the return of Verna Felton, playing the female elephant. You’ll remember her as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, among other roles.

You will hear some of the music of The Sherman Brothers, but arguably not their most famous work. The song, The Bare Necessities (ha, it’s a bear singing it. get it?) was actually written by someone else, Terry Gilkyson..

The Jungle Book is also another example of reused Disney animation.
The wolf cubs in the beginning is reused animation of the puppies from 101 Dalmatians.

When Mowgli calls for the wolves (another beginning shot), that animation is reused from The Sword in the Stone.

The sequence of Baloo running with Mowgli after “I Want to Be Like You” is reused from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

More notable, which is rarely known, the designs of the elephants (along with some animation) was reused from a short entitled, “Goliath the Elephant.” You may also recognize one or two elephants from Dumbo.

Other sequences from The Jungle Book will be used in later films, which we will discuss then. Why reuse animation? To save money. It’s as simple as that.

On the same note, the noise of Louie’s laugh is actually that of B’rer Rabbit’s from Song of the South.

My favorite fact about The Jungle Book, according to Ollie Johnson (one of the nine old men), Baloo’s entrance was acted out by Walt Disney. Ollie used his movements to create the scene.

Another fun fact was that Louis Prima (King Louie) and Phil Harris (Baloo) couldn’t sing “I Want To Be Like You” together due to scheduling conflicts. They recorded their parts separately. Phil’s part wasn’t completely scripted. He improvised quite a bit.

Last, but not least, the vultures are, indeed, supposed to resemble The Beatles, who were supposed to provide their voices. However, a scheduling conflict prevented the Liverpool band to oblige.

However, despite the fun facts, there is one fact that is the most important.

The Jungle Book would be the last animated film that Walt Disney would personally oversee. It would be released October 18th, 1967, after Walt’s death on December 15th of the previous year. More on this in the next post.

So. Jungle Book. Lemme tell you about a story about Sarah’s and my relationship with this movie.

About three years ago, Sarah and I were hanging out and for some reason we were talking about Disney movies. Weird. I know. And somehow, it turned to Jungle Book. And we both realized that, although we both grew up on quite a bit of Disney, this movie included, neither of us could remember what the hell it was about.

So we ran over to my parents house, grabbed the VHS they keep around for when family with little kids come over, and watched it.

Fast forward to this past weekend when we watched this movie for the blog, and we still couldn’t have told you what it was about. And I’m sure in a year, I won’t be able to tell you again. Why? Because, just like Sword in the Stone, this movie has a beginning, an end, and everything in between really doesn’t have anything to do with either.

The beginning is about a young human boy who is abandoned in the forest. He grows up with the animals and, at a tender young age, meets Jane. Wait. That’s not right. I’m thinking Tarzan.

The child, Mowgli, grows up with the animals and, at a tender young age, is voted out of the jungle because Shere Khan, a human hating tiger, is in that neck of the woods and is likely to eat the young lad. So to keep him safe, they decide he needs to go live in a human village. Either that, or the moral is that the expediency of tossing out an outsider to protect your own is just. Anyway, so the panther that originally found him, Bagheera, takes him off.

First, the two encounter a sneaky snake, Kaa, voiced by Sterling Holloway (Pooh) who tries to eat him. Because bony little human boys are delicious. What I took away from this is that the jungle was dangerous regardless of Shere Khan. But Khan is like, super badass, so I guess the comparison is moot.

Regardless, they sneak by him, and Bagheera and Mowgli get in a fight because Mowgli thinks he’s invincible and will take out a tiger. I guess he’s hitting puberty?

So Mowgli takes off only to meet a bear. But it’s a friendly bear. In fact, it’s a pretty awesome bear. It’s Baloo. I have a particular fondness for this bear, although not because of this movie, but because of the spinoff using the Jungle Book characters that appeared in 1990: Tale Spin. I can’t much remember what that was about either, but I know I did watch a lot of it as a child.

Baloo teaches him to be a bear with a really memorable song, but then some damn dirty apes kidnap Mowgli and there’s another good song. They want him to teach them to make fire. But he doesn’t know and Baloo comes to steal him back anyway. Baloo is convinced that Mowgli needs to go back to the man village, so there’s some direction back towards the plot, but then Mowgli runs off again only to get a Kaa redux. Thanks to Shere Khan interrupting Mowgli escapes only to run off into the forbidden lands (I suspect hyenas lurk there) and meet some buzzards.

This is another bit that, although the plot doesn’t stick with me, always did. The buzzards sit around taking about what they want to do. Of course the other buzzards are all, “I dunno. Wot you wanna do?” So whenever someone pulls that with me, I always respond “Ah, now don’t start that again.”

Most people don’t know what I’m talking about.

Mowgli wanders by and is feeling rather sad so they sing him a barbershop quartet song which is interrupted by Shere Khan who, surprise! wants to eat Mowgli. Baloo and Bagheera show up and there’s a rather unexciting battle with lots of hair pulling. Until lightning strikes some brush. Simba and Scar fight while everything’s on fire…. uh… Wrong movie again.

They all fight until Mowgli ties a burning branch to the tiger’s tail which apparently scares him off.

After the duel, they drop by a town and he sees a girl. Apparently he gets twitterpated because he completely forgets everything about the jungle and runs off after the girl (another Bechdel Test failure).

Oddly enough, there’s some precedent for this. The most famous is Victor of Aveyron. A child grew up in a forest in France and entered the town. He was adopted but never had a very good time of it. Language, for the most part, proved beyond his grasp and he never fit in.

But the movie doesn’t show any of that. Instead, it cuts off with him skirt chasing. And that’s why it’s a kids movie.

Classic story. King Arthur is probably one of the best known kings there’s been. Which is interesting. Because there’s debate to whether or not he actually existed. Contemporary references to him are sparse, vague, and many historians aren’t convinced. Whatever. He’s in good company.

The main story that people know has something to do with killer rabbits and holy hand grenades. There’s lots of components to the legend but the most enduring part is the eponymous portion for this movie: The pulling of the sword from the stone. Which has almost nothing to do with this movie.

Really, this movie can be summed up as follows: Arthur is a squire for a jerk. Merlin knows he’s going to make it big and thus goes all Obi-Wan to train the boy. Things happen. He pulls the sword from the stone and lives happily ever after.

There’s not even a damsel in distress. As with so many other Disney movies, this one bombs the Bechdel Test. Instead, we get a highly educated owl, Archimedes. I really like this little guy. Partly because he shares a voice actor with Rabbit from the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which we’ll get to in another decade or so.

I do have to say I like Merlin in this too. He’s rather eccentric, but he’s very big on the brain over brawn. So he turns him into a fish, squirrel, and bird which puts him in situations he has to think his way out of since it’s such an unfamiliar situation. He teaches him things like gravity, which won’t be discovered for a few hundred years. But Merlin’s up on it, because he’s a time traveler.

After going through all this training, Arthur ends up still being a squire to Jerk who takes them to a tournament in London which will determine who the king is. Because apparently everyone forgot that the rightful king is supposed to be the one that pulls the sword from the stone. Which Arthur does.

And suddenly the plot (and everyone else) forgets about anything that’s gone on and it’s all about the sword being pulled. Which wasn’t pulled out thanks to anything Merlin taught Arthur, but rather, due to a complete brain fart. Way to subvert the majority of the movie.

There’s a lot of good points to this movie, but the rather random feeling to the whole movie was kinda a buzzkill.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s still in Disney Land so she’ll be catching up on posts when she gets back. As a note, while writing this post she sent me a text saying “Oh my gosh, I’m going to need some convincing to catch up on blog posts”. So if you like reading this blog, please, leave a comment or share this site so we know that the traffic we see isn’t just google bots.

Looks like there won’t be a post this week either. Sarah and I took a trip to Marceline, MO (Walt’s childhood home). She’ll have some pictures of that and I’m sure she’ll write up a post on it, but for now, she’s finishing up a 280 page paper for her master’s degree, so wish her luck.

In the meantime, walking around a midwest town on a sunny day with it being 90º out yesterday took its toll. We’d planned on doing a bit of catching up last night, but I ended up with no energy, a migraine, and 11 hours of sleep last night to recover. What a wonderful cinco de Mayo.

With any luck, we’ll be able to get in at least one or two movies next weekend between her graduation and leaving on a well deserved vacation.